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The accumulated damage from Donald Trump’s trade wars and worldwide monetary tightening is taking its toll. We are one shock away from a contractionary vortex that would be extremely hard to control.

In America the Federal Reserve’s instant tracking gauges of GDP growth have halved since late January. They are approaching stall speed.

In China it is becoming clearer that the Communist leadership either cannot or will not engineer another brake-neck credit boom to revive an economy slipping into structural stagnation. Stimulus is trickling through but it is a pale image of past reflation cycles.